It is known that laminated floor can be very noisy. The cause for this is the way in which the floor panels are produced. In the development of this product a great deal of attention was focused by manufacturers to making a product that had a hard wear-resistant surface with a moisture resistant core made typically made with a formaldehyde binder and wood particles. The ultra-hard wear layers applied to the upper and lower panel surfaces are harder and higher in density than the wood core layer and thereby tend to generate high pitched sounds. This tends to make the floor noisy.
The industry has responded to this noise concern by providing various sound-deadening foam and felt materials that are meant to absorb the sound generated by the laminate floor. However, these soft pads tend to reflect the sounds back into the panel which, being a good sound conductor, transmits the sound back into the room.
This noise problem is so serious that many municipalities do not allow laminate flooring to be installed in stacked dwellings such as apartment buildings and in some cases, do not allow laminate flooring to be installed in commercial offices. It should be noted that, typically, wood floors such as solid wood, or engineered wood floors, do not experience this problem to the same degree, since the wood substrate has a significantly lower density than the laminate floor core materials, and the urethane wear coatings used on these wood floors are flexible acting to further absorb sound.
As the name implies, laminate floor panels are made up of several layers. Typically, a laminate floor comprises a wear layer consisting of a translucent paper and a thermosetting resin with abrasive particles, a decorative paper or foil, an MDF (medium density fibreboard) or HDF (high density fibreboard) base or core panel, and a paper backing (or balancing) layer, which is also pre-impregnated with thermosetting resin. The entire loose assembly is placed into a press and compressed, under the supply of heat, in order to become one hardened whole. This technique is known as DPL (Direct Pressure Laminate).
Of course, other production techniques are also possible. For example, first a top layer may be formed which, amongst others, comprises the aforementioned decorative layer and the layer of synthetic material present thereupon, after which this formed top layer is attached to a basic layer or basic structure. This technique is known as HPL (High Pressure Laminate).
Additionally, impressions can be realized in the transparent wear layer in order to imitate a wood grain, stone or other textures, which are typically present at the surface of real wood or other materials such as ceramic tiles, leather, etc. In the prior art, this is typically performed by simply providing a series of impressions in the floor panels, which impressions typically extend in the same direction or in random directions.